Sean Miller and Blair Wilson

Wild Kingdom

July 3 – August 2, 1997

Location / 82 University Street (Harbor Steps)

In July 1997 Sean Miller and Blair Wilson presented their two-person exhibition Wild Kingdom. Miller and Wilson presented paintings, drawings, video, installation, and performance works. Many of the pieces involved hallucinatory imagry related to hunting, masculinity, science fiction and animals. The figurative work in the show often revealed a humorous meditation on the angst-filled dysfunctional side of the American male identity.

Wilson displayed acrylic paintings of various cartoon-style characters in expressive and contortionist poses as well as fabric relief sculpture characters. In addition, Wilson offered narrative cartoon imagery and paintings created in his "squiggilism" style, and sold his own zine publications.

Sean Miller presented oil paintings and SINK/ING, a collaborative video installation with Jay Bryant involving five televisions with images of sinks flying like geese in a "V" formation. Miller also presented Liverbrau Beer (a collaboration with Bethany Taylor and Brian Wallace). Liverbrau was a beer company that featured a giant image of a human liver on every bottle. Each bottle featured a different celebrity liverspotlight and thus a different image of a famous celebrity substance abuser. Liverbrau was brewed for Wild Kingdom by Miller, Wallace, and friends. It was served at the opening and the empty bottles (100 bottles of beer) were displayed on shelves throughout the show. The show was listed by Joe Heim of the Seattle Times as one of the top picks for exhibitions in 1997 in his January 1 column "Off the Wall."

Text by Sean Miller

“… opening in which an unintentionally kitschy wedding band performed one of their original songs about the evils of topping trees, and a junkie acquaintance of someone gave a creepy (but very entertaining) performance of a poem entitled “Black”. Sean and Blair's work was also very interesting.” — Jay Bryant